What is NFC?

NFC stands for near field communication. This is a short range signal like bluetooth and wifi accept it works over a distance of 4cm or less. It is designed to securely transfer small amounts of data by tapping your phone against the NFC tag.

NFC is certain to change the way we pay for goods and how products and services are marketed. NFC is the future of our mobile interactions.

This may sound like a bold claim however, we will prove this to you by showing you the primary market drivers and once we have done this we will show you a multitude of innovative ways to use this technology to dramatically enhance your marketing and be ahead of the curve.

You may not realise it but without doubt you already use NFC. Across the world, metros, undergrounds and bus companies currently use NFC Rfid technology in there rechargeable top up cards. Take the London underground, over 5 million journeys a day are conducted using a contact-less, rechargeable top up card called an oyster card. This is NFC technology in use today!

So the next evolution for NFC which is already happening with every major bank, every phone network and even through google is to take NFC technology and enable a mobile phone to become our credit card.

The fact is people are more bothered about loosing there mobile phone than there wallet. Our phone has become such an integral part of our lives and taking it to the next step to be able to pay for goods, download and redeem coupons is the next inevitable step.

Apple currently have over 250 million credit cards attached to iTunes accounts do you not think they see this as an amazing source of revenue to take a tiny slice of every transaction we ever do using an iPhone?

This is not just being driven by the large corporates this technology is coming because it offers us all an incredibly easy way to make payments, track our spending, redeem coupons and get information such as flyers, coupons, brochures videos all direct to our handsets with the simple tap of a mobile.

This is also going to be the greenest form of marketing because it will eventually make paper based flyers, business cards and coupons redundant.

The market drivers for all phone networks and handset manufacturers are obvious so this technology is coming whether we like it or not.

Currently the handset market is gearing up for NFC and to highlight this at the end of this video we are going to show you a google produced video promoting the new google wallet payment system being integrated into every google android handset.

NFC Uses

So lets look at how you will be using NFC with some real world examples.

Smart posters using NFC transform a traditional poster into an interactive multimedia poster that enables the user to download content and this connects the physical world to the virtual world. We have a dedicated smart poster section on this website so please view that video for more information.NFC is currently supported on Android, Blackberry & Microsoft Smartphones and Tablets.

Social Media

NFC can be used to promote your social media presence. As a business owner you will be inundated with calls and emails from companies offering to build or promote your social media presence. The cost of a Facebook like from Internet based traffic is between $1 and 5$ per individual Facebook like..... This is a shockingly high cost for very low return on investment.

NFC is the perfect solution this can be done via NFC stickers, posters, coasters and much more. Lets put this in a real world environment the NFC tag is used in store and your real and local customers are tapping their phones on the tag to be redirected to your Facebook page to like you. This has minimal cost but you know 100% that the likes are from real people and not Internet generated fake accounts.

This is your true target market and these are the people you need to be engaging with and re-marketing to. Once these people have liked your page in store you can then take them on a customer journey by promoting to them whenever you choose and getting them to opt in for email marketing, app downloads and much more.

So if you have a presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare or any of the major social networks NFC gives you true targeted local marketing forever.

Store Your Number

It is not easy to get customers to store your phone number but by using NFC we can store your business phone number direct into your customers handsets with a simple tap of the phone.

This will be the beginning of the end for paper based business cards. This NFC technology can be placed into anything from a key fob, to pen, mug, coaster, or a business card. So you can literally have a coaster on your desk where someone taps there phone and walks away with your contact details stored safely in their phone.

Coupons

By using NFC you can allow your customers to simply tap their phone and be redirected to a coupon that they can use in store. How simple and how useful is this to your potential customers. The easier we make it the more they are likely to do it.

Right now coupons need to be placed in newspaper adverts, sent through the post or be handed out by staff, this comes with significant cost to you in time money and manpower and you do not know that the end user even wants the coupon so giving them a simple tap system to get a coupon on demand hugely improves your coupon to redemption ratio.

NFC coupons give you the flexibility to have them in multiple locations and it makes it incredibly easy for you to update them all simultaneously.

Website and Content Promotion

NFC gives you the ability to promote various things ranging from your website to video content, flyer's, brochures and much more. The NFC is a simple opt in tap system to redirect your customers to any content you want on the web.

Obviously this has huge benefits its exceptionally eco friendly and completely cost effective.